“Coastal Areas, Evacuation, Tonight.” This is what the sign on the highway read as the Grady Mock Trial team sped down the road in taxis toward JFK airport in New York City. We were leaving. After three months of preparing for an international mock trial tournament and with one round before we would have completed the competition, we were leaving, disqualifying ourselves from the tournament.

The Empire International Mock Trial Tournament was held in New York City during the weekend of Oct. 27-28, the same weekend Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared New York to be in a state of emergency. Hurricane Sandy was on its way, projected to hit New York late on Monday, Oct. 29. It was being called “the storm of the century.”

I am closing attorney and captain for the Grady mock trial team, and while I understood a storm was rising in the horizon, mock trial was occupying most of my thoughts that weekend. Before we left Atlanta, our coach Brian Leahy showed me a news article depicting the path of the hurricane, but at the time I failed to give it a second thought.

On Saturday, the first day of competition, I heard about teams planning to leave before the end of the competition, but the talk was buried under my excitement about how our team was performing. We lost several teammates to college last year, yet, despite our inexperience, we were able to win the first round and survive a very difficult second round.

That night, I heard a rumor that airports were going to cancel all flights on Monday, the day we planned to depart, but to me … it was only a rumor. Sunday morning, going into our third round of competition, Leahy told the team we had moved our flight to earlier on Monday morning since our later flight was cancelled. Fine with me.

But after third round, I was told we had to leave. Now.

It was that sudden. There was no forewarning, no indication that this option had undergone consideration. The coach simply came up to me no more than five minutes after our team had completed the third round of this four-round competition and said we were leaving.

I was in disbelief. There would be no closure to the last three months our team had spent preparing for this one competition. There would be no satisfaction of having our work culminate into a final team ranking in the tournament. As land was in sight we were abandoning ship. All I could think was that we were quitting, … and I am not a quitter.

But eventually, disbelief turned into annoyance, and finally annoyance into acceptance. The storm ended up matching, perhaps surpassing, its severe expectations. The flight we took out of New York on Sunday afternoon ended up being one of the last flights to leave the city before the storm hit. Although I still remain disappointed about our sudden departure, in hindsight, I now realize we made the right decision.

I was at first shortsighted, considering only the immediate consequences of departing, but eventually, I learned what we would have faced had we stayed. Sure, we would have finished the tournament, but that would have resulted in a week without power stranded in a New York hotel. I wouldn’t be back home safe in Atlanta right now. Our coaches understood the risk that we would have faced had we stayed, and that is probably the reason why we didn’t. It was a difficult decision, one that was reached only after hundreds of phone calls between parents, coaches and airport personnel as the team was competing in the third round, but it was a decision I now agree with.

And in reality, what would we have gained from one more round of competition? Honestly, not much. The experience of preparing for three months and, in the process, allowing students new to competition a chance to develop mock trial skills was more valuable than an additional single round of competition. A journey does not necessarily need to end at an expected destination to be purposeful. Admittedly, it is disappointing our preparation never concluded in a “final round,” but it wouldn’t have added much to our already fulfilling season leading up to that round.

Unfortunate circumstances will always arise in life beyond anybody’s control, but it’s important to look not at the negative consequences but at the positive aspects of the situation. In this case, I am glad I was able to take away from the mock trial season an understanding of its benefits rather than disappointment over what could have been.